Monthly Archives: July 2010

Evie, 2 Months & Gorgeous

Evie being nursed by Judy LattimoreEvie has now been mixing it with Claire, Hugo & I for a whopping two months.

It is a strange feeling in a way, sometimes I think to myself it feels as though it was only yesterday that Claire and I were in at Pindara Private Hospital for the birth and other times, it seems as though it is nearly a distant memory already. Putting a little thought behind why that might be, I think the latter is because we’ve done it before – there isn’t that first time parent panic or uneasiness with everything you do.

During the last six weeks since Evie was 2 weeks old, a lot has happened as you can imagine. Probably the most significant departure from our ‘plan’ is that while Claire had every intention to breast feed Evie for the forseeable future – her body just didn’t want to play ball. Claire battled through a few bouts of mastitis and after the last one we decided to call it a day. While I understand why it’s disappointing for women & mothers, however it can actually be a good thing in the long run as now the men can lend a hand. I love feeding Evie and it lets me get close to her, in a similar way as breast feeding does for a mum – so I think that is great. The other obvious advantage is that we can share the load and it takes a whole lot of pressure off of Claire – she can leave the house without the kids now and that isn’t actually an issue – though I wish that’d happen more often than it does.

Date Weight Length Head Circ
18/5/2010 3.60Kg 49cm 33.5cm
21/5/2010 3.41Kg
3/6/2010 4.04Kg
2/7/2010 4.84Kg
14/7/2010 5.22Kg 57.5cm 37.3cm
21/7/2010 5.69Kg 58.5cm 38cm

When Hugo was born, Claire and I thought ourselves very lucky because it didn’t take long before we had Hugo in a little routine that worked well for him. Before we knew it, I was waking him up for a dream feed, putting him back to bed and we wouldn’t hear a peep out of him until around 7AM. We figured with such an excellent run with Hugo, what’d be the chances that we’d have that sort of fortune with Evie – well it turns out very likely. By about the 4 week marker, we began moving the feeds around to match the schedule in Save Our Sleep that we used with Hugo and badda-bing badda-boom, happy baby that sleeps through the night! There are a bunch of different baby books around and after seeing what can be accomplished by following a schedule, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough to a new parent – you’d be punishing yourself for no reason by not reading one.

More to come, stay tuned.

Goodbye Telstar

Ford Telstar Ghia on the tow truck after being written off in motorway accidentAfter being involved in a car accident on the Gold Coast M1 in late June, my trusty 1989 Ford Telstar Ghia has been written off by my car insurance company.

I’ve been tottering around in the Telstar for the better part of 10 years and only now is the odometer finally approaching 200,000 kilometres.

George & Jude bought it for me as my first car while I was at university, which was a massive upgrade from the family Ford Falcon XM ute with distinctive blue cobra stripes. It was powered by a 2.2L 12 valve 4 cylinder engine, which even in its hay day probably wasn’t the most performant engine, nor particularly free revving – however I suspect that might have been part of its recipe for longevity. I still remember how excited I was, especially when I realised that it had a velour interior, power windows, power mirrors and wait for it, oscillating air conditioning vents in the front!

In that time, I really haven’t had any major problem with the vehicle either mechanically, in the interior or on the exterior of the car. It gets serviced once or twice a year, I put fuel in it and it just goes. On the mileage front, in my mix of highway and city driving to and from work, I get approximately 500km from a tank of fuel and over 550km if its strictly on the highway.

I’ll miss the Telstar, it has been a great little car and served myself and Claire really well over the years. Now I just need to find an adequate replacement and hope that I have a hassle free existence with it as the Telstar has provided.

Hugo Kicking Back

Hugo laying on the coffee tableNot so long ago, Hugo realised that he could climb onto the coffee table.

Initially, he was just laying on it with his chest, which followed by him trying to lift a knee onto it in a climbing action.

Claire & I jumped on that behaviour as soon as he started it, however it hasn’t stopped it completely and Hugo will test the water again every so often.

While Claire & I were at the other end of the house recently, we returned to the kitchen to see Hugo laying or more precisely, lounging on top of the coffee table watching one of his favourite TV shows.

Hugo doesn’t watch a great deal of TV, however there are a few shows that he absolutely adores. I’m not sure what it is about any one given show at a time that captures his attention, but he clearly goes through phrases.

The flavour of the month at the moment are:

  • Dirt Girl World
  • Roary The Racing Car
  • Chuggington
  • Captain Mack

Bumbles Cafe Surfers Paradise

Bumbles Cafe Surfers Paradise Gold CoastThis evening I was lucky enough to have dinner at a small, quirky Surfers Paradise restaurant named Bumbles Cafe. It is located on River Drive at Budds Beach and has a great outlook over the famous Gold Coast canals with their luxurious mega mansions and super sized cruiser style boats. The site was originally a convenience store and in January 2000 was converted into a small cafe with a handful of tables and a bench seat. Over the years, that has grown to now seat sixty inside spread across a split level floor and four general dining spaces, coupled with alfresco dining for forty.

By the look of it, Bumbles take a lot of pride in their menu and keeping it seasonal and fresh. We were eating from the menu of the month, which had three courses with 4-6 dishes in each section. I chose a lemon risotto with Morten Bay bugs for an entre, snapper on a bed of beans and a sticky date putting for dessert. All of the meals I had for dinner were excellent, well cooked and flavoursome. With so many other delicious options on this months menu alone, I can see why people return to Bumbles restaurant for dinner.

I’ve known about Bumbles as a cafe from 2004 when I first moved to the Gold Coast as it is walking distance from one of our offices, however didn’t realise that they had such an excellent dinner service as well. I would absolutely love to go back and sample some of the other items on the menu at some point, which will no doubt be different but equally as scrumptious.